Not Smoking Breaks

In my city, we have demonized an activity that was once commonplace and acceptable. I refer, of course, to smoking. Smoking used to be cool, in the days of black and white movies, but now pulling out a cigarette is shorthand for “I have money to burn and I can’t read warning labels.” I’m not writing to attack or defend the institution of smoking. Personally, I have smoked more cigarettes with my ear than with my mouth. That’s another story that I do not wish to recall at this moment.

The cynical might wonder if some people take up smoking just for the breaks. Every couple hours, or more frequently for the more hopelessly enslaved, smokers trudge outside for a breath of “fresh air”. Employers on a whole tend to tolerate these breaks, and I believe they are wise to do so. Freshness of air aside, a couple minutes on the hour to catch one’s breath—figuratively, at least—makes the rest of the hour productive. This is at least true of office work, which rarely brings forth a sweat, but often brings forth a headache.

I have taken to stepping outside myself, to take a few minutes and not smoke. Sometimes I even walk around the building. On my sanctioned lunch break, I’ll even walk around the block, which is dominated by the Winnipeg Technical College. There is a retention pond and an open field teeming with grasshoppers. The retention pond, with a busy highway behind it, may not have stunning beauty but it often has geese. In the suburbs one has to take what one can get.

In my specific case, these breaks may not improve productivity at work at all. Walking in the open air, watching the geese fly around and recalling the names of clouds, my thoughts are pushed to broader, loftier spheres. I contemplate all that I know of the world, or perhaps my own problems and concerns. Sometimes there is a wonderful revelation, but usually just a sense of being part of a large and fascinating world. Either way, when I return to whatever it is that sits on my desk, it seems mundane and insignificant by comparison. I return less motivated than before!

If these breaks are bad for productivity, they are at least good for actual quality of life. A change in scenery and a breath of outside air is a good reminder of the present moment, that I’m actually in a certain place, at a certain time. It is true that when I try to imagine myself from far away, I start with the now-familiar opening screen of Google Earth—but such are the times. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think there’s time to head outside to not smoke one more time before bed...

Folk Festival

Last week I began my new job at Neegan Burnside, a civil engineering firm in Winnipeg. They work in northern communities in Canada, water, wastewater and infrastructure stuff. No complex, technical, expensive stuff here, but a fair bit of travel around the province and beyond, and a tiny office. Small enough to know everyone’s name and probably a few other key facts as well. That first week though, I only worked two days, the week was cut short on both sides, by Canada day on Monday, and the Folk Festival on Thursday and Friday. The festival extended to Saturday and Sunday of course, but those days are off by default in this country, thanks to the blood spilled by our heroic forefathers over the centuries in defense of western civilization. Well, not my forefathers, though I’m sure that they performed other actions, such as plowing, in equally heroic fashion.

The thing that surprised me most about the Winnipeg Folk Festival was that I had never been before. Music was just the beginning. Well, music wasn’t actually the beginning, speaking chronologically. Days ended with music, and continued with more music at the camp site, but by using the cliché that something, music in this case, is ‘just the beginning’ I mean that there was a lot going on in addition. These additional items of interest were the natural setting, the crowds of people (and what an eclectic bunch), food, and the rather ambiguous ‘good times’. Incidentally, volunteering is the way to go. Volunteers get free admission, food, backstage access, and an embarrassing amount of praise regarding their indispensability. I for one was not indispensable, as Tavern Security. Why anyone would think that I would make a good bouncer is not within my capacity to fathom, but even further beyond that capacity is why 17 bouncers are needed at the beer gardens of a family-friendly celebration of folk music, peace and love.

One foolish idea that I had was that I would meet up with my cousins at the campground, and set up next to them. The campground is a vast field with over 70,000 tents, and there is no finding of anyone in specific. In fact, it is a rule throughout such an event that you cannot set out to find anyone in particular but if you wander around long enough you will find someone, an old friend or perhaps a new one. This is right out of Siddhartha—finding is better than seeking. The downfall of the seeker is the joy of the finder—the objects to be found are dynamically infinite, not only beyond count but in constant flux.

I was worried that it would be hard to transition from the last two months of random jobs, job hunting and music festival attendance to a regular office schedule. Time will tell, but the first full week wasn’t so bad. Still, it’s hard to get too excited about grey carpets, grey cubicle walls and fluorescent lights. While I’m not excited about those things, the people to work with, the huge part of my country that most people never see, and the problems to work on in that region, should keep me going for a while. I think that when it comes to finding the right place to be at the right time, at some point you just have to pick. One thing which I lack, and I know I’m not the only one in my generation, is depth of experience. We’re all about the breadth. I surprised myself with the realization that I didn’t want to travel around the world and do something different in a different place each year. I was also surprised by the force of that realization; it was a potent idea, potent enough to get me to stay in Winnipeg with no immediate plan to leave.

It seems to me that there are lots of ways to throw away vast stretches of time without actually living, but one in particular—refusal to leave home, see the world and chase dreams—gets a disproportionate amount of press. What about running around constantly without a home and failing to see much of anything on a meaningful level?

There’s this feature on the Facebook website that lets you show everyone a world map highlighted with all the places you’ve been. General disdain aside for all the extras on Facebook—it started as a brilliant networking site and I still use it to catch up with all sorts of people—there is something about that map that makes me uneasy. I don’t want to say that having a map like that is a terrible thing, so I will introduce an independent character to say it:

Soren the Angry Stegosaurus: I am angry! In part it is because I am being chased by bees. The bees here in the Cretaceous Period are much larger than the ones you know, and have a painful sting, but what stings me even more is the notion of a map to keep track of all the places that I have gone. In an absolute sense, such a thing is morally wrong. It is not resonant with the spiritual energies of the world and I find it abhorrent.

Now, I wouldn’t go nearly so far as Soren. If keeping track of the countries you have visited online makes you happy, more power to you. For me, I think it would end up reducing genuine life experiences to ticks on a check-list. I can’t figure out why that is so tempting. It must by a symptom of a wider condition, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Perhaps it is a desire to set quantifiable standards for a successful life, and see steady progress. People seem to be really insecure across the board. Ugly plants grow with confidence alongside pretty ones, and obnoxious animals like squirrels chatter as if they owned the place and never worry that perhaps there’s more to life than hoarding nuts and chattering. People though, they can’t receive enough outside affirmation to slake their insecurity. Even accomplished, confident people. A subject for future thought.